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In attacking ATRA’s annually well-documented “Judicial Hellholes” report, which recently ranked St. Louis as the nation’s least fair civil court jurisdiction and criticized what we believe are scientifically groundless verdicts against makers of talcum powder, local personal injury lawyer Roger Denton claimed to have no involvement in litigation against one of those makers. But documents ATRA provided to the Post-Dispatch caught him in a lie . . . → Read More: ATRA Letter in Post-Dispatch Pushes Back against Lying Lawyer

The American Tort Reform Association today offered condolences to the family and colleagues of a longtime tort reform ally in California, John H. Sullivan, who lost a courageous battle with cancer last week at the age of 73 . . . → Read More: ATRA Praises Longtime California Ally, John Sullivan

In light of a stunning defense motion filed today in a West Virginia federal court, alleging massive fraud on the part of plaintiffs’ lawyers in their aggressive recruitment of clients for pelvic mesh litigation, the American Tort Reform Association (ATRA) renewed its call on Congress, prosecutors and bar associations to investigate and prosecute those who defraud the civil justice system . . . → Read More: Citing Latest Bombshell Allegations of Trial-Lawyer Fraud, ATRA Urges Congress, DOJ to Investigate

The American Tort Reform Association today welcomed a much anticipated Maryland high court decision that upheld, with a 5-2 majority, the doctrine of “contributory negligence,” which has been a settled part of state law for more than 165 years and prevents someone at fault for his own injuries from collecting damages in a lawsuit . . . → Read More: ATRA Lauds Maryland High Court Decision Upholding ‘Contributory Negligence’ Doctrine

Winning an automatic Points of Light citation in the upcoming edition of ATRA’s annual Judicial Hellholes report (due out in December), a Colorado Supreme Court decision this week instructs trial courts to enforce reasonable limits on the discovery process.

Discovery is often abused by plaintiffs’ lawyers who demand millions of seemingly unrelated documents from a defendant in hopes of driving litigation costs high enough to force a settlement or otherwise providing grounds for additional lawsuits. Such a fishing expedition is what a trial judge had allowed in the case of DCP Midstream LLP v. Anadarko Petroleum Corporation.

Even though some personal injury lawyers still deny that Philadelphia was a judicial hellhole in the first place, much-needed reforms imposed earlier this year by the chief administrative judge seem to have dramatically halted the explosive growth in recent years of new mass tort filings there . . . → Read More: Reforms Drive Down Mass Tort Filings in Philadelphia